Some conventional stepper motors and digital servo motors are integrated with motor driver circuitry, which provides driving signals to the connected motor. The driver circuitry of these conventional integrated motors is controlled using digital control signals from an external controller. Thus, conventional integrated motors include input/output (I/O) pins to receive digital control signals from the controller. As an example, the digital control signals may include an enable signal, a direction signal and a pulse signal.
The driver circuitry of these conventional integrated motors is usually designed such that configuration parameters or values of the driver circuitry can be set or changed with respect to, for example, maximum current, microstep, gains and directional polarity. These configuration parameters of the driver circuitry are typically set using one of two methods. The first method involves the use of mechanical control devices, such as dip switches, jumpers, mechanical switches and potentiometers, which are electrically connected to the driver circuitry. The second method involves the use of a computer, which is connected to the driver circuitry via a serial communication connection, such as RS-232, Universal Serial Bus (USB), Ethernet or Serial Peripheral Interface Bus (SPI).
A concern with the first method for setting the configuration parameters of the driver circuitry is that access to the mechanical control devices to set the configuration parameters may be difficult. The mechanical control devices and the driver circuitry are usually situated in the housing of an integrated motor. Thus, one or more sections of the motor housing may have to be removed to access the mechanical control devices.
A concern with the second method for setting the configuration parameters of the driver circuitry is that this method requires a serial communication port and related communication components to receive and transmit data with a computer, which can increase the manufacturing cost of the integrated motor.
Therefore, there is a need for an integrated motor device with driver circuitry and method of setting configuration parameters of the driver circuitry, which can alleviate the above-described concerns.